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Nick Gans

Polling Variability
In Robert S. Erickson and Kent L. Tedin’s analysis of polling through American media in the book, American Public Opinion, the types of polling and the presentation of them are discussed. Similar themes appear in Sheldon R. Gawiser and G. Evans Witt’s book, A Journalist’s Guide to Public Opinion Polls. Both these books share similar themes of how to present a question and why it is important.
In pages 36 through 46 of Erickson and Tedin’s book, American Public Opinion, they mention two newer types of polling which are popular and successful in today’s style of polling. The robotic polls have become perhaps the most efficient type of polling because of its cheap cost and speed of gathering information. The robotic poll gathers information by telephone with an auto dialer which randomly selects subjects to be interviewed in a prompt fashion. The other type of polling, the internet poll, has grown substantially in the last decade due to the emergence of the internet as a primary media source. Internet polls are done voluntarily and are the fastest forms of polling. No human element is involved and there is no variability or presence of confounding variables. The Internet poll decreases the problems which Erickson and Tedin discuss in their book, and what Gawiser and Witt do in theirs.
The main tool for gathering and processing information according to Gawiser and Witt is the question. Giving the right question will give the correct response and giving the wrong one will give the wrong response. The language involved in the question can direct or guide the interviewee to a specific, oftentimes, desired response which the interviewer is looking for. The presence of powerful words such as “allow”, “restrict”, and “eliminate” also prohibit a question from being accurate and balanced. Balance also plays an important role in the bias of questions.
With the use of strong words and the order of the questions, these questions can be biased from a political standpoint. Knowing both the results and the questions asked helps determine whether or not the results are valid or could have a degree of bias.
When a poll is conducted can also strongly dictate the validity of the questions and results. Because of the possibility of bias in terms of the timing of questions, media outlets have begun to experiment and now use a type of surveying called a panel-back survey. A panel-back survey questions people on their opinions of a certain issue before a news event, such as a debate or financial crisis, and after the news event. In November of 2008, CBS performed a panel-back study where they re-interviewed 436 voters who participated in the New Hampshire Caucus of January 2008 to gauge whether or not they have changed their political views on which they would prefer to vote for if any candidate was still in the race for the presidency. According to CBS, 26% of these voters would change their vote from their original candidate which they initially supported.
Gawiser, Witt, Erickson, and Tedin all share common beliefs on what creates an accurate and successful question. They all also hope for an increased awareness of these problems from the public and hope that with all the new polls and questions being asked, that people take time to think about the question being asked and whether or not the answer they want to provide is given.